Southern
California (1986)In
Altadena, California, near Los Angeles, hundreds of people tramp through
the home of Reverend P.G. Pierce and his family to see the brilliant
image of a cross shining through the bathroom window. According to
the Pasadena Star-News, which ran a photo of the cross, the image
appears to be shining through the window from the outside, but when
people go into the back yard to find the source of the phenomenon,
there is nothing to be found. Only when one stands inside, looking
out, can the cross be seen, a phenomenon reminiscent of a hologram
in which a three-dimensional image is only visible from certain angles.

Pierce, an evangelistic
minister, believes that the cross is a sign of Jesus Christ's return.
Commenting on the phenomenon, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner observes
that ,"whether or not a miracle exists, it is clear that many people
in Los Angeles want desperately to see and touch a fingerprint of the
Creator... All but the most committed of atheists would like to have
a sign, any sign. Everyone wants to know that we are here for a reason,
and that a higher entity stopped by to tell us so." (reported in Share
International, October 1986)

(1988)As reported above,
crosses of light appeared in the Southern California town of El Monte.
At least 10 crosses have been reported in the area, which was previously
a rather run down, poor, mainly Hispanic neighbourhood. However the
crosses of light touched the lives of many of the residents and a great
transformation has taken place in this community.

(1990) (1)A
report in the Los Angeles Times (17 August, 1990) describes crosses
appearing in bathroom windows in Montecito Heights, Los Angeles, as
they were in 1988 in El Monte. Two and sometimes three images appear
simultaneously in the shape of crosses in the frosted glass.

These new crosses
can be viewed from outside into the bathroom window, but this time through
etched glass, according to the LA Times. When the source of light is
turned off the images disappear. In spite of the pessimism of the local
clergy who as usual insist on commonplace causes for this phenomenon,
the local response has been enormous, with queues stretching up the
block armed with videos and cameras, and the crowds are still growing.

(1990)
(2)At
the home of Leo and Loretta Alphonso in Violet, Los Angeles, there now
appears a radiant panorama of crosses, elaborate foot-tall figures that
are tapered at the ends and appear set off in the distance. Three of
them glow in white and one in gold. Some see a red cross that floats
past the others. (Source: The Dallas Morning News, 23 November, 1990)

(1992) (1)A
cross of light appears nightly in the window of Maria Ruiz' home in
Baldwin Park near Los Angeles. Ruiz first noticed the cross during a
power cut when she stood in her darkened bathroom and saw the bright
yellow shape formed by a light above a nearby freeway. Ruiz had lived
in the apartment for seven months without seeing anything unusual.

A steady stream
of neighbours and relatives now visit her bathroom to take a look at
the cross. Some visitors cry, pray and kneel on the floor when they
see the image. Ruiz, a Catholic who attends church infrequently, said
she used to think reports of religious sightings were "a bunch of phony
baloney." But now she's not so sure. "I can't say it's a sign from God
or it's not a sign from God," she said. "It is weird." (Source: Pasadena
Star-News)

(1992)
(2)On
8 December 1992, Joann Noriega saw a "big, beautiful cross", created
by the light of the moon, appear on her bathroom window. She had never
seen the image before in the 17 years she had lived in the house in
Montclair, Southern California. Noriega opened and closed the window,
wondering if the cross would go away. But the cross remained. Noriega
got down on her knees and began praying. "It was the Virgin Mary," Noriega
said. "I had no doubt. I didn't even try to guess at it."

Noriega saw the
Virgin on the lighted cross, surrounded by a host of angels next to
her "like the Immaculate Conception." The vision came after midnight
and lasted for more than a week before it disappeared. The vision of
the Virgin on the cross returns every month during the full moon.

Other phenomena
have occured in Noriega's home - additional crosses in the window, rainbows
on the ground, oil seeping from a candle in her bedroom, and the sound
of bells. In her living room are faint photographs, taken by Noriega
at her house, of a man on a cross reaching out to a similar figure in
prayer, and a diamond-shaped figure in the sun.

Because of the cross,
and a scent of roses in the house, many people make a pilgrimage to
her house seeking the Virgin Mary's presence. Each week, Noriega holds
a Friday night prayer meeting in her living room. It is here that the
Virgin has been appearing for three years, Noriega says. Noriega also
invites troubled people into her home to help them overcome despair
and renew their faith in God by sharing her miracle with them. "Inviting
people here to pray and see the crosses makes them feel good," Noriega
said. "They can feel the Holy Spirit. They can feel all these warm feelings."

The cross of light
has transformed the lives of many people, including a former drug addict,
Hussem Farach, who said: "I believe I've been in the worst places in
my living hell... But now I know, whatever happens, God is there for
me. He's already proved it."

(1994)On
21 May, Maria Ortega of Orange County, in southern California, awoke
from a deep sleep at about 3 am. She thought she heard a baby crying
and got up to investigate.

She walked through
the house, listening for the source of the baby's cry. When she turned
on the light to look in the bathroom, she heard a loud rush of wind.
Then she saw the cross in the window and fell to her knees and cried.

Since then, life
has changed completely for the 12 members of the Ortega family who share
the house. Maria Ortega says she feels more spiritual. George, her 21-year-old
son, has stopped drinking. And then there is the constant stream of
visitors who come into their home, file through the living room and
into the bathroom to stand in the tub and look at the cross.

Three hundred to
seven hundred people stop by each day. At four in the morning, a mother
with a baby knocks on the door. Maria's husband, Margarito Ortega, says
that although he feels "a little tired", he cannot deny people the right
to see the cross. Says family member David Ortega: "I think it's a message
to everybody. Something's going to happen, but we don't know what."
(Source: Orange County Register, USA)

(1996)Hundreds
of people have visited the home of Carlos and Ines Alvarez in Bakersfield,
California since the couple discovered a large cross of light in their
bathroom window on 7 March. The Alvarez' say they can see the cross
especially well when the light is just right at about 8 am and 5 pm
each day, and at night when the neighbours' lights are on. At other
times during the day, the cross is visible when light is focused on
the window.

As word spread about
the cross, crowds began lining up at the Alvarez' house to see the phenomenon.
While viewing the cross, people kneel and pray, say the rosary, cry,
and even faint.

"A lot of people
think it's a message God is trying to send us because we're in the last
days," said Mrs Alvarez. According to the article: "The family has a
copy of a locally produced video about the cross, which says: 'Christ
is coming soon' across the bottom of the frame in Spanish. ... The family
says a priest from Arvin told them the cross was a sign of the Second
Coming." (Source: Bakersfield Californian, USA)

Louisiana, USA (1991)In
a suburb of New Orleans, four foot-tall crosses of white and gold light
appeared suddenly in the bathroom window of a 61- year-old pipefitter
who had been praying to St Jude for help with his failing eyesight.
The man and his wife have had to set up evening viewing hours to accommodate
the hundreds who come to see what they believe is a miracle. There are
no internal or external lights which could be casting the images against
the glass, and the pipefitter reports he has regained part of his sight
since the crosses appeared, although he readily agrees his doctor's
injection also helped.

In a related development,
television producer Dan Meenan of the US tabloid program Hard Copy,
told Share International contributor and video producer Frances Robinson
that after filming a story about a previous manifestation of a cross
in Louisiana a cross appeared on the videotape which had not been present
during the original shooting. Meenan said that on a production which
attempted to document an alleged cross appearing in the Louisiana sky
in l989, they were not able to see the cross in the sky on tape, but
that they did an interview with a Catholic priest who was at the scene
of its appearance just outside New Orleans. It was later in the studio
that the cross appeared, superimposed on the image of the priest, stated
Meenan. He saw it while they were editing. "It was as clear as could
be and had nothing to do with the image of the priest; it hadn't been
there when we interviewed him; we went over it five times to be sure
it was there, and it looked exactly the same to me each time", even
though the editor he was working with couldn't see it. (from Share International,
January-February 1991)

(1999)Parishioners at the Greater Macedonia Baptist church in the small
town of Port Sulphur, Louisiana, USA, had just finished celebrating
mass on Christmas morning when one of them felt something burning into
his back. At the same time it became very bright outside, even though
the sun was not shining. They discovered that two crucifix-shaped lights
had appeared in the church windows, with the appearance of a figure
hanging from the cross.

Since Christmas
Day the crosses, originally gold or bronze-coloured, have been steadily
growing in intensity and thousands of visitors have inundated the tiny
community, queueing outside to enter the church and witness the phenomenon.
There are no external factors which could account for the manifestation:
reporters from the local television station WVUE-TV have filmed the
crosses and are convinced they are genuine.

One visitor, Lucretia
Hunter, returned home to Buras to find an identical cross of light shining
in her bathroom window. Parishioner Lois Gibson said that the crosses
had "brought the whole community here closer together, irrespective
of creed or nationality. It is a sign at the time of the millennium
that it is possible for us all to live in harmony together." (Source:
The Planet on Sunday, UK)

Knoxville USA (1995)

"I can't get
the hair on the back of my neck to do anything but stick straight out
these days. The crosses are indeed in the windows at the Copper Ridge
Baptist Church. That is a fact. It doesn't matter if you believe it
or not. There at first, I was a bit of a sceptic myself. But now that
I've seen the crosses of Copper Ridge with these two eyes, I'm a believer"

(
Bob Hurley, columnist for The Greenville Sun )

On November 8, 1995,
the members of a small, 135-year-old Baptist church near Knoxville,
Tennessee noticed that the light coming in through the windows was in
a new pattern: the shape of an even-armed cross. All five sanctuary
windows, which have been installed in the church for 26 years began
to exhibit the same phenomenon.

The crosses are
not on the window per se, but are suspended in mid-air like a holographic
image some 30 yards away from the building. They appear white in the
daytime when the light source is the sun. At night, when a streetlight
is the light source, they are a fiery, reddish-gold. And while the image
which appears on the glass may only be four to six feet tall, the crosses,
as seen through the windows, stretch from the ground upward to about
40 feet.

Since the Knoxville
crosses have been made public via word-of-mouth and local, national
and international media, more than 35,000 people have visited the church.
There have been many undocumented claims of healing ( such as blindness,
deafness, cancer, and drug abuse ).

Florida, USA (1994)A Cross of Light
has appeared in the bathroom window of Ida Rollins' house in Riviera
Beach, Florida. People are so moved by it that they have been flocking
to see it -- so many that the Riviera Beach police have had to put barricades
up on the street to keep the cars out.

A radio announcer
called it "the miracle of 37th street." In spite of the crush of people
around her home, Rollins believes it is a sign from God, a message of
hope for one of the poorest areas in town. (Source: Miami Herald, USA)

New York, USA (1998).
A cross of light appeared in a building in West 113th Street, New York,
NY

Philippines(1991)In 1991
a cross of light was brought to the Philippines from the USA. It impressed
not only journalists (see story below) but also a local Chinese doctor
who was so inspired by it that he would frequently check the windows
in his clinic in the hope that he, too, had been given such a cross.
Crosses did eventually appear in almost all of the clinic's windows,
as well as in some of the neighbouring houses.

A Journalists
ReactionA pane
of glass containing a cross is brought into the Newsday Philippines
newsroom.

It was mid-afternoon.
With a score of neon lights on and sunlight streaming through two windows,
there could be no occasion for hocus-pocus. The piece of glass was set
up on its box like a picture frame. It looked exactly like any other
piece of frosted glass, almost opaque, one could not see through. A
flashlight was pointed at it and switched on and there appeared this
even-armed cross of light seemingly within a diamond-shaped aura. Somebody
placed another switched-on flashlight beside the first and two crosses
appeared. The flashlights were switched off. The crosses disappeared.
They were switched on again, the crosses reappeared.

The usually
boisterous newsroom was silent. Our inimitable fun-man, Managing Editor
Teddy Berbano, who could squeeze out of even the most serious occasion
the most hilarious joke, had no punch-line, or any line, this time.
As stated earlier, the phenomenon was awe-inspiring, or, at the very
least, intriguing. ( Julian Cruz, News Editor, Newsday Philippines,
22 March 1991)

Canada
( c1989 )A
Share International reader writes about a cross of light which appeared
in Vancouver, British Columbia.

(1994)A
cross of light appeared in a pane of glass belonging to Calgary school
teacher, Ehren Rebmann. Months earlier he heard about the crosses of
light, so he bought a small pane and shone all kinds of light through
it. Nothing appeared so he put the glass away and forgot about it. Six
months later, there was a meeting in his house for a speaker who had
a cross of light. During the talk, Rebmann went into his bedroom, grabbed
his piece of glass and shone some light through it. A cross appeared.

It remains on the
glass today, sitting in his living room. For him, the cross is a symbol
of hope. "The main message here is one of hope to mankind," says Rebmann
sitting on his couch, the cross of light shining over his shoulder.
"We may be going through some pretty weird stuff right now, pretty harsh
stuff, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it isn't an
oncoming train." (Source Calgary Herald September 24, 1994)

"There is no
scientific explanation for the phenomenon

as glass doesn't
spontaneously change it's refractivity.

It was done,
I believe, by The Christ." ( Ehren Rebmann )

France
(1991)In
a letter to Share International, Frances Robinson, producer of a documentary
on the crosses of light, tells a story about a young woman's vision
of a cross.

(1997)A
Turkish family living in Germany were given a huge wooden cross as a
gift. Shortly afterwards, crosses of light began appearing in the windows
of their flat. The Isatabas family, faithful Aramaic Christians, have
lived in Germany for 15 years and own a Turkish restaurant in Aschaffenburg.

Mrs Isatabas, interviewed
by Andrea Bistrich for Share International, said:
"I first discovered the cross just before Christmas 1997. I had been
out doing some shopping and was waiting at the traffic light. The light
was on in our flat, and the restaurant was also lit up. You automatically
look there. Suddenly you notice the cross. You know, it's exactly the
Christian cross which is a symbol of our faith in Him. I instantly went
into our flat to check. This happened just before Christmas 1997."

She has no doubt
it is a miracle. "Now, when I have problems, I pray," she said. Problems
include scepticism from the Church ("Not at all interested") and neighbours.
"Many of them are laughing at us," said Mrs Isatabas, "they don't believe
in it. But the fact is: we have a cross of light. What can we do if
one day a cross appears in our window? But when you tell them this is
a miracle from God they all say: You're mad! We've had the window glass
checked by a glass firm and they told us the cross is not caused by
the glass. They said that is impossible."

If she had a choice,
would she keep it? "Definitely yes," she said. "It is calming, like
a protection. It gives you hope." (from Share International, September
1998)

New Zealand (1994)Crosses
of light have appeared in New Zealand in a house in which Benjamin Creme
had been staying during his lecture tour of that country. The crosses
were the subject of a prime time news story on national television which
was broadcast with the following introduction: "Spiritual phenomena
or simple physics? That is the question dozens of Aucklanders are asking
each day as they line up to witness a white cross which appeared on
a window of a suburban house."

(1997)"A
cross of light appearing in the window of a Devonport house has been
hailed as another sign Christ has returned to the world." Thus begins
a recent article, "Cross of light sign of Christ", in the New Zealand
Sunday News.

The article continues: "Signwriter Paul Larkin told Sunday News the
cross of light he noticed in his bathroom window was a sign of "something
big" about to happen. "It was spotted by Larkin three weeks ago, shortly
after he moved into the house. He recognized it, having seen other crosses
in Auckland and having learned about them at his Transmission Meditation
group. "I'd been in the bath, hopped out and got changed. I came back
and turned off the light and it was there." Larkin said the previous
tenants in the house had not seen the cross. He said the cross "appeared
when I was down quite a lot, sorting through a lot of problems. It has
really helped me through it."

The article quotes "cross-sightings-follower, Buddy Piper" as saying
the crosses were "signs (Christ-figure) Maitreya and the Masters are
placing in the world ... to awaken humanity to the truth He is here."
(Source: New Zealand Sunday News)

(1999)
In November 1999 the owner of a property in the suburb of Bucklands
Beach, Auckland noticed a cross of light in the glass panel of the front
door of the cottage behind their main house. The couple (and their parents)
organise many of New Zealand's New Age Fairs and already knew about
this phenomenon. Unlike the usual light source of a light bulb or candle,
this cross is illuminated by the light from the TV set behind it and
therefore constantly changes colour.

(2000)
A cross of light was discovered in the window of a retirement home in
Auckland, New Zealand on Easter Sunday - by the producer of The Miracles
Page website. It is the seventh cross to have appeared in the city.